“The Hitman’s Bodyguard” is poised to top the box office for the second consecutive weekend, but it is the latest 2017 film to spur questions about whether Hollywood movies are making enough strides away from characters emphasizing racial stereotypes.

Latest entertainment videos

Why Did Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux Split? Everything We Know About Their BreakupPeople

Boseman's theatre-focused trip to AfricaAssociated Press

Review: Black PantherFox5DC

Wahlburgers opens in West HollywoodFoxLA

Extreme Sports Team Launches off Ramp in SuccessionJukin Media

Disney’s Toy Story Land Finally Has An Opening DateFortune

Daniel Kaluuya's roots in UgandaAssociated Press

'On the Come Up' Angie Thomas Unveils the Striking Cover For Her Next BookEntertainment Weekly

'Bad Moms'? Not Hines or SarandonAssociated Press

Celebrating the Chinese New YearEuronews

“The very setup, even from the commercials — I was like, ‘Huh, the good white man charged with this transgressive, badass black dude is troubling — and possibly [there’s] this sexy Latina figure,'” Treva Lindsey, associate professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Ohio State University, told TheWrap. “I was just like, ‘Too many tropes and too many stereotypes of blackness.'”

Lindsey said that black characters needn’t be “saints or uncomplicated” but that “Hitman’s Bodyguard” trades in “hackneyed and cliched” plot devices. She said of Jackson’s character, “You have someone who is so transgressive that you need whiteness to protect them from themselves or from the harm that would befall them.”

“We’re here again, after a summer in which a movie like ‘Girls Trip’ becomes the highest-grossing comedy thus far this year, and in the year that ‘Atlanta’ wins [the Golden Globe] for best comedy,” she said. “We have these moments of characters written really richly and really beautifully, and ‘Hitman’ seems to be behind that curve. It’s almost like this got greenlit before [studios realized,] ‘Wow, people like complex black characters who aren’t necessarily good, bad or superhuman — just human.'”

This isn’t the first film this year to earn criticism for seemingly dated representations of black characters. In February, “Fist Fight” took flak for centering on Ice Cube playing a hot-headed teacher who wanted to physically fight his by-the-books co-worker, portrayed by Charlie Day.

More recently, director Kathryn Bigelow’s film “Detroit” led to questions about whether a white filmmaker and screenwriter (Mark Boal) were the right fit to tell the story of the city’s 1960s riots.

According to Lindsey, “Detroit” was seen by some viewers as “almost pornographic in the ways in which it depicted violence against black bodies, and insensitive and uncaring and distanced and cold in its depiction of anti-black violence.”

“I do think film in general has a long way to go,” she said. She added that audiences seek “something that hits the notes and ranges that we all exhibit in life and doesn’t rely on these dated, outmoded ideas about race and gender.”

Representatives for Lionsgate and Hughes did not immediately respond to requests for comment.